In my opinion, there is a significant hole in the self defense preparations of most people who carry concealed handguns. The handgun is a useful tool and for the situations where it is truly needed, there is no substitute...but there are plenty of situations in which it is the wrong tool for the job or where use of a lower level of force earlier can prevent the need to use the handgun altogether.

A significant number of us live in areas where our options for defensive tools are extremely limited. In Virginia, I can carry so many handguns on my person that I clank when I walk...but I cannot legally carry a sap or a blackjack concealed. These are extremely effective force multipliers that can give you a way to stop a bigger, stronger, or better trained opponent when properly deployed...but I can't use them. It is technically legal for law enforcement officers in Virginia to carry them concealed, but to actually use one is against the policy of practically every department I'm aware of in the state.

Police in Virginia can use a collapsible baton...but there again, carrying one of those concealed is not legal for a non-sworn citizen in Virginia. The collapsible baton is pretty useless when used as you are supposed to and it's lethal force when you use it like you aren't supposed to.

Empty hands can be legally used in self defense everywhere. Empty hands as typically used by relatively untrained citizens (and police officers as well) are also often pretty ineffective at stopping a violent threat before the fight escalates to the point where serious injury occurs. If you have pretty good hand-to-hand skills you face the significant chance that your use of effective strikes, throws, or grappling techniques can easily cause the kind of damage that Virginia law (and the law in many other states) considers to be lethal force.

This is where OC spray comes in.

Chuck Haggard retired as a Lt. in a pretty busy police department that fought with a lot of criminals. When he started as a police officer they had revolvers, handcuffs, and batons. Officers were routinely causing and sustaining serious injuries in fights with combative suspects. Chuck's department started to experiment with the use of OC spray and found that it was sufficiently unpleasant that people who were to that point spinning up to a fight were no longer interested in violence. It accomplished the feat of taking the fight out of the fighter without causing serious injury to the suspect. As a result, injuries to officers and suspects in his department dropped 90%.

I had heard him speak about his experience with OC at TacCon 2018 and so I was keenly interested to take his OC instructor's course offered through FPF Training last Saturday. I've wanted an effective, relatively safe, and most importantly legal intermediate force option that I can use myself and recommend to others. Chuck has the perfect blend of education and experience to teach everything you really need to know about the subject.

The Class:

Chuck gave a very in-depth presentation on the active ingredients in OC spray, where it comes from, and crucially how it is manufactured. All OC products, it turns out, are not created equal. Chuck provided the class with what they should look for to purchase an OC product that is effective for their specific needs. I consider myself a pretty clued in guy on self defense, but I walked away from this presentation with several pages of notes about the strengths and weaknesses of various products on the market, different propellant choices, solvent choices, spray types (fogger vs. streamer vs. gel vs. foam) and OC concentration levels. (Major Capsaicinoid Content)

Chuck ended the classroom portion by discussing cases where OC spray was less likely to be effective (severely emotionally disturbed people, excited delirium, etc) and showed video of one of his successful street deployments of OC spray to stop a violent criminal spinning up for a fight.

I was glad for this, because he covered the incredibly important but also incredibly under-trained subject of pre-assault cues. Students in the class were exposed to the signs of impending assault and how to use them to make a decision on the appropriate time to use force to hopefully prevent the impending attack or at least in time to give themselves a significant advantage.

Classroom portion over, we transitioned to practical exercises. The first was a deceptively simple demonstration of how difficult it can be to actually get an effective hit with OC products. Chuck handed me different inert OC trainers and had me perform the relatively simple act of trying to spray him in the eyes with those products. I'm a pretty good pistol shooter and if you gave me the challenge to hit a relatively small target at the distances we were using it wouldn't have been difficult for me to do it...but OC canisters are not as easy to aim and hit with as pistols.

The class was then broken in half and given inert streamer trainers (using only nitrogen propellant and water) to practice. One half of the class simply tried to spray the other person in the safety glasses as they slowly advanced. This was surprisingly difficult to accomplish. This generated a significant learning point for me: It's not sufficient to get an inert trainer for your chosen OC cannister to see how it sprays one time...you should probably regularly practice with a trainer to ensure you can hit when you need to. The difficulty in getting an effective hit to the eyes is also a good reason to think about how many bursts of OC your chosen solution carries in it.

Chuck then went on to teach Managing Unknown Contacts including practical considerations of distance, further exposition on pre-assault cues, and crucially where OC spray can be integrated into the MUC paradigm to thwart encroachment by a potentially hostile actor. Students were given the opportunity to work through the exercise in pairs working on body positioning, footwork, and verbal skills. Ultimately they used the inert trainers in the process to dissuade what they could reasonably conclude was a criminal assault.

This fed into the next subject...the possible need to escalate force after deploying OC spray. The bad guy role player would be hit with OC spray and decide whether or not to draw a knife trainer to escalate to a lethal force situation. The student had to observe, decide, and act on that stimulus:



Following this exercise Chuck concluded the practical exercises by discussing retention principles using the required dummy guns and ultimately how those principles could be applied to typical OC products:

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The day concluded with a written test covering some of the information in the classroom presentation.

Summary:

Here's my read on what you are getting with this class - it's a comprehensive examination of all the information you need to select an OC product that suits your needs, the lawful application of that product in defense of yourself or others, and sufficient grounding in the "why" of what you've selected and how you used it to give an intelligent, defensible articulation on the use of the product should you be forced to use it for real.

There is loads of bad information out there about OC and Chuck cuts through all of it to give you a realistic look at OC as a tool and where it can benefit your self defense plan. I've carried OC for years and this course validated that choice and more importantly gave me a better understanding of how I can use the tool and, crucially, that I need to practice using the tool if I hope to employ it effectively in self defense.

I highly recommend an OC class with Chuck, instructor level or otherwise, if you can find your way into one.

Just like my handgun, I hope I never have to actually use OC in my defense...but if I do the $300 I spent on this class will most likely have given me the knowledge and skills to stop a potentially much more costly fight on the street and the courtroom.

Chuck is clearly an expert in this area and he's good at relaying the information you need to know about it. I don't think you can go wrong with this class or any similar content he offers in the future.